[vincekerrazzi]

After working with them for nearly a year, it’s even worse than you think.

Half the team didn’t have basic understanding of git, and exactly none of the team designing the “smart charge” scheduling had or even had driven an EV.

The complete incompetence of every vehicle OEM team I worked with outside of Tesla and Rivian is part of the reason I left that job.

[jve]

You are just confirming my suspicion on that car manufacturers have terrible software divisions. Outside of some new EVs which have software one of major selling points.

Why don't classic manufacturers not ramp up their software quality side? I mean it's 2025, they lag behind at least a decade, but software development (infotaiment) practices seems like dark ages.

Except for MCU - from user perspective they just work.

[constantcrying]

>Why don't classic manufacturers not ramp up their software quality side?

VW is now at their second billion dollar attempt to fix their software. It's not like they aren't trying.

Also consider how software development works at hardware companies. It is all outsourced, inside the company you have "engineers" who are "managing" the requirements" and in "best cost countries" you have the dev teams, communication is hard and the actual devs are not particularly skilled and definitely not paid to care, they just have to do the requirements.

Tesla was revolutionary because they had Software developers, which they paid normal software developer salaries. VW has just sunk Billions into Rivian to have them do the software.

[worthless-trash]

> Why don't classic manufacturers not ramp up their software quality side?

Because they use the fight-club metrics for software too:

A x B x C = X, where A is the number of vehicles in the field, B is the probable rate of failure, and C is the average out-of-court settlement.

The company does not initiate a recall (or fix) if the calculated value X is less than the cost of the recall itself.

Edit: If anyone from a car company wants competent software engineering management to build a better team, HMU, I can put you in contact with someone. It'll never happen though.

[HotGarbage]

Because everyone is making $300k+ at MAGA and they're offering half, if that.

[AlotOfReading]

You don't need 300k FAANG workers to make competent and reliable software. Companies in China and Japan manage just fine and half the tier 1s actually writing anything are outsourcing it to places where 300k USD is unthinkable.

It's more important to start with an organization that cares about quality in the first place.

[nebula8804]

Who in Japan is good at this? I can only imagine the R&D division at maybe Playstation and thats it.

China has so many people that EE and CS are a dime a dozen, thats why they have a competitive market thats low cost. People are in a jungle trying to survive.

[0]: https://youtu.be/ljOoGyCso8s?t=101

The video is (Supposedly) EEs doing customer support roles thus allowing Cheap PCB for hobbyists, the equivalent in the US does not exist.

Side Note: I hear this is also why SASS never really took off in China. Why pay someone else for software when you can get a dozen people to make your own cheaper.

[Voultapher]

One of the best engineers I know works for [1] Woven by Toyota, Inc. They do care about getting software right, arguably more so than the german automotive sector. Don't get me wrong they all want good software, but wanting good software and putting the right systems in place while resisting the urge to chase the next hype wave are quite two different things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woven_by_Toyota,_Inc.

[constantcrying]

>They do care about getting software right, arguably more so than the german automotive sector.

How so? All 3 major German Car Groups have invested substantially into software. VW Group set up an entire company with the core goal of allowing different operating practices for software development, which doesn't sound too dissimilar to Woven, at least in its goals.

[AlotOfReading]

Most Japanese companies doing firmware are happily working like it's still the 90s. Nikon and Omron are examples. Sure, they don't have working networking, but some would say that's a good thing in automotive software.

By all accounts, rakuten is dealing with absolute horror shows of internal codebases, but they're generally competent at delivering reliable software without a lot of surprises in my experience.

[labcomputer]

Yes, but you do need a few really good senior people. If your salary table has a hard cap at 150k (and no equity to make up for it), you can’t hire those people.

You also have a hard time hiring good mid-levels because you can’t possibly pay them as much as the top people, right? You also have the problem that some of your SWEs might make more than their managers, and that’s just unconscionable.

So what do you do? Have a “secret bonus” program that even most people in HR don’t know about? Hiring becomes tricky: Better make sure you don’t have a live one on the line when the only HR with need-to-know is on vacation.

[AlotOfReading]

One of the points I'm trying to communicate is that there are skilled people in most parts of the world. They're less common outside SV, but that doesn't matter unless you're trying to hire at big tech campus scale. So you focus your much smaller efforts on recruiting those people with a good environment, give them the tools to produce work they're proud of. If you pay what they'll be happy with, it's almost always going to be vastly less than big tech pays.

That even works in the bay area, which is how places like Oxide keep fantastically skilled people despite paying below market rate.

Is it the easiest way to hire? No, but I never said it was.

[IshKebab]

There are plenty of countries with very competent software engineers making more like $100k. Basically anywhere except America is less than that.

[pas]

it's the culture

of course places that value good software engineering and have the cash flow to pay them do so

[raverbashing]

> Why don't classic manufacturers not ramp up their software quality side?

Because MechE are even worse than EEs at doing software (and yes, having worked at EE companies it was 90% cluelessness)

(also let's not pretend that HW companies ran by SW people don't have multiple issues neither ;) )

And as per other commenter

> Because everyone is making $300k+ at MAGA and they're offering half, if that.

Yes. That as well

[neilv]

I have a theory that most companies run by people who had harder education programs than CS... will misunderstand software engineering, underappreciate the difficulty of doing it well, and undervalue the people who can do it well.

Not only EEs, and not only any real engineer, but the hard sciences, as well.

[rkomorn]

> Why don't classic manufacturers not ramp up their software quality side?

I've wondered this but it does seem to me that the companies that do the best software also seem to be the newer companies that were driven by investors instead of sales/profitability.

Can classic manufacturers afford the kind of spending it takes to overcome inertia and make quick strides on the software side when it likely won't move the needle on sales anywhere near as much as it costs them?

Edit: for me, it's similar to what we see in the "flying taxi" maybe-autonomous eVTOL field: Airbus gave it a shake, but there are at least half a dozen startups bankrolled by VCs outspending them on a prayer they'll be the one to succeed.

[constantcrying]

>Can classic manufacturers afford the kind of spending it takes to overcome inertia and make quick strides on the software side when it likely won't move the needle on sales anywhere near as much as it costs them?

Look at how much VW has spent. They built up entire Software company and they are now giving billions to Rivian.

[labcomputer]

It’s not how much they spent, but how they spent it. Their CEO was bragging about how many SWEs they were hiring.

Quick question for HN: Would you rather work with 1000 mediocre SWEs or 10 really really good ones?

[rkomorn]

Doesn't that kind of confirm my point though?

VW's having to invest huge amounts of their revenue while Rivian's going around burning VC/investor cash without a care in the world for profitability.

[constantcrying]

>Doesn't that kind of confirm my point though?

I was just answering your question. VW clearly has the money and is willing to spend it.

>Rivian's going around burning VC/investor cash without a care in the world for profitability.

I believe that a huge part of the VW deal with Rivian was that they needed more money. Making cars is expensive and Rivian can not succeed on investments alone.

[nebula8804]

Who have you worked with? Any thoughts on Toyota or Mazda? I heard that while Mazda is quite conservative in car design (still use buttons, less futuristic design) they appear to have a extensive data collection operation which surprised me given their conservative nature in literally everything else.

[general1465]

Sounds like Microsoft designers working on Windows, while using MacOS.